The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Listen to The Top if you want to hear from the worlds TOP entrepreneurs on how much they sold last month, how they are selling it, and what they are selling - 7 days a week in 20 minute interviews!
The Top is FOR YOU IF you are:
A STUDENT who wants to become the CEO of a $10m company in under 24 months (episode #4)
STUCK in the CORPORATE grind and looking to create a $10k/mo side business so you can quit (episode #7)
An influencer or BLOGGER who wants to make $27k/mo in monthly RECURRING revenue to have the life you want and full CONTROL (episode #1)
The Software as a Service (SaaS) entrepreneur who wants to grow to a $100m+ valuation (episode #14).
Your host, Nathan Latka is a 25 year old software entrepreneur who has driven over $4.5 million in revenue and built a 25 person team as he dropped out of school, raised $2.5million from a Forbes Billionaire, and attracted over 10,000 paying customers from 160+ different countries.
Oprah gets 60 minutes or more to make her guests comfortable to then ask tough questions. Nathan does it all in less than 15 minutes in this daily podcast that's like an audio version of Pat Flynn's monthly income report. Join the Top Tribe at NathanLatka.com/TheTop

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Evan Liang. He’s the CEO and co-founder of LeanData which he founded after managing a data cleanup project at his first company and felt the pain of cleaning Salesforce data by hand. Prior to LeanData, he was the GM and VP of products at Caring.com where he grew a small acquisition within the company’s main business. Generally, he owned 50% of the company’s revenue over 2 years. Before Caring.com, Evan worked at Shasta Ventures, a leading venture capital firm focused on end-user driven businesses. Before that, he worked in project management at eBay and business development at Microsoft where he helped launched the Xbox 360. Evan started his career at Battery Ventures where he specialized in software and ecommerce investments. He holds his MBA from Kellogg and BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

Sandy Khaund. He’s the CEO of Upgraded, a platform for tickets using blockchain technologies. Previously, he was the CTO at InStadium, a sports venue ad network and senior director at Turner Broadcasting along with CEO of Iryrnsoft, a video-based learning for mobile devices. He was also the COO of teen social network at Piczo and director at Microsoft.

C. Lee Smith. He’s the CEO of SalesFuel, a multi-million dollar sales enablement firm he founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1989. SalesFuel leverages critical insights that enables its clients to acquire, develop and retain their best employees and customers. The company is launching a brand new product called TeamKeeper that will revolutionize the way managers manage and develop their people which leads to a happy, business culture and a reduction in turnover.

Chris Mann. He has over 25 years of experience in product management and strategy. In 2010, he joined Bizo and created a marketing automation system for B2B paid advertising and led the company through its $175M acquisition by LinkedIn. He was also involved in LinkedIn’s advertising business. Prior to Bizo, Chris held product leadership role in IBM and Coremetrics. Today, he is the CEO leading Brightfunnel.

If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – It’s not about the high school diploma. It’s about the work ethic and the sacrifice you’re willing to put in to achieve greatness

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:47 – Nathan introduces JT to the show

02:08 – It is possible to buy a bestseller from Book in a Box

02:23 – The cost will depend on many factors

02:40 – One of Nathan’s friends spent almost $250K on Book in a Box because he wanted to put out a book and increase his speaking fee

03:15 – There are many people who paid more than $250K to get a book out

03:21 – Nathan read his friend’s book and thought it was trash, but his friend’s speaking fee increased

03:33 – It’s still a positive ROI

04:02 – Book in a Box specializes in ensuring the books are filled with valuable and meaningful content

05:11 – Book in a Box has made it possible for authors to publish their book

05:27 – JT just met a professional speaker who has been in the business for 22 years, but never had a book

05:34 – He never got the time to write a book

05:41 – Book in a Box will just interview him and write the book for him

Patrik Fagerlund. He’s been working with mobile internet since the 90s. He’s an engineer by training and now, he’s the CEO and founder of Widespace, a mobile adtech company. Outside of work, he loves spending time with his family with his four kids and his wife along with many activities and sports.

Eyal Hertzog. He’s been a venture-backed technology entrepreneur for over 20 years. He’s the founder of Metacafe, Israel’s fastest growing video sharing site which has reached over 15M uniques at its peak. Previously, he founded Contact Networks which was one of the first social networks in 1999. He’s now at Bancor Network and has been an outspoken thought leader on cryptocurrency in Israel and is a talented piano and bass musician.

Mitchell Reichgut. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Jun Group. Prior to founding Jun Group in 2005, he led Bates Interactive, the online unit of Bates Worldwide Advertising which is now owned by WPP. As general manager and creative director, he helped grow Bates Interactive into a 70-person integrated unit with clients such as EDS, Warner-Lambert and many others. Before joining Bates, he was the creative director at Think New Ideas. He began his career as Art Director at Grey Advertising where he created print and TV ads for clients. Throughout his career, he’s worked with major brands in the industry including Procter and Gamble, Parker Brothers, Reebok and others.

Evan Leong. He’s the VP of Product at Devslopes, a learn-to-code platform focused on taking beginners to paid professionals to curated project-based videos. He’s always been involved with startups since 2015, when he took the leap from a corporate job to join the startup world full-time.

Joe Zhou. He’s the founder and CEO of FirstBlood, an eSports startup that recently broke the speed record for crowdfunding, specifically in the crypto world. Prior to founding FirstBlood, Joe co-founded Alt-Options, a Boston based fintech or financial technology startup that built the first American style option trading platform for digital currencies. Joe holds a BSBA from Boston University Questrom School of Business and an entrepreneur residence at Babson College.

Alex Yakubovich. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Scout RFP. Prior to Scout, he was a co-founder of another startup which was acquired by LivingSocial in 2012. At that company, he led the operations team and helped the company become the largest online ordering providers in the country. He attended Case Western Reserve University where he studied mechanical engineering.

Christoph Jentzsch. His background is in Theoretical Physics and he’s been part of the Ethereum project since 2014 as a lead tester. At the end of 2015, he co-founded Slock.it, working on decentralized sharing economy through the connection of blockchain and IoT (Internet of Things). One of the more famous projects that he was part of was the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).

Brandon Bruce. He’s the COO and co-founder of Cirrus Insights, the sales plugin for Gmail and Outlook. The company is number 41 on the Inc. 5000 and the fastest growing company in Tennessee. Brandon once raced his bicycle 508 miles across Death Valley in 35 hours and 7 minutes.

Jeff Glueck. He became the CEO of Foursquare in January of 2016 after 18 months as the COO of the company. Prior to that, he was the CEO of Skyfire Labs, co-founder of Site59.com and CMO of Travelocity. Previously, he was a strategy consultant at Monitor Company and served as a White House Fellow in the Clinton Administration. He holds a master’s degree from Oxford as a Marshall Scholar and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College.

Dave Kellogg. Dave has more than 20 years of experience in high growth companies. Dave has been CEO of MarkLogic, CMO of Business Objects and member of Aster Data board of directors. Dave steered MarkLogic to $80 million in revenues. Business Objects witnessed equally impressive growth as it reached a revenue of billion dollars under his able guidance. Tune in and listen to Dave as he discusses various financial metrics of Hostanalytics. Targeting small businesses and enterprise level businesses, this company has grown 4x over the past 3 years. Read on and find out what makes this SAAS business tick.

David Rogier. He’s the CEO of MasterClass where he leads the company’s vision of redefining digital learning by leveraging the expertise of world-class experts with the cutting-edge technology platform. David created MasterClass after seeing how the online education space was offering low-quality content and an unfair advantage of students.

Andy Swan. He’s the founder of LikeFolio. The company uses social data to determine shifts in consumer behavior on Main Street before it becomes use for Wall Street. This is his third financial technology company. The second, MyTrade, was acquired by TD Ameritrade in 2007.

Chase Jarvis. He’s one of the most influential photographers in the last 20 years. He’s also the creator and CEO of CreativeLive. He’s won awards for his images on six different continents, including his contributions to the Pulitzer Prize winning story Snow Fall—the acclaimed New York Times interactive story heralded as the “future of journalistic storytelling” and Emmy nominated for his work documenting the music scene in Seattle. In 2009, he created the Best Camera app which was the first photo app that shared images directly to social networks. It was #1 on iTunes, App of the Year on Wired and got many other awards. He's currently focused on his work as the founder and CEO of CreativeLive, the world's largest online education platform for creatives and entrepreneurs with over a thousand teachers, 1500 classes and 10K hours of classes.

Moshe Vaknin. He’s been dreaming about his company YouAPPi since he bought his first iPhone 3. After a long and successful career working in a variety of positions, Moshe founded 3 successful startups before finally starting YouAPPi. As the CEO of the company, he brings vast experience in the fields of advertising, publishing and affiliate marketing, making him adept at identify opportunities that can be transformed into profitable realities.

Sergey Sholom. As a teenager, he was a championship-level gamer and created the first large gamer group called S-port Tournaments in Russia for Quake. After getting his PhD in mathematical modeling, Sergey founded Datcroft Games LTD in 2004. Over the past 13 years, the company has developed multiple worldwide popular games with millions of users. He continues to oversee a company with over a hundred employees and continues to bring new cutting edge games to the market. Their latest game called Pixel Wars which will be released in the summer of 2017, has already received critical acclaim and will become the game changer in mobile eSport.

Tran Hung. He’s one of the founders of Uquid which is the world’s first service offering debit card solutions for cryptocurrency holders. They currently support 79 of the biggest digi-coins including bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, ripple, etc. They also offer worldwide mobile recharge support, bills payment services, grocery and pharmacy vouchers, ticketing services, and many other benefits.

Martin Koppelmann. He is the co-founder and CEO of Gnosis, the decentralized platform for prediction markets. He has been an entrepreneur and thought leader in the blockchain space for more than 4 years. He is closely related to prediction markets and has worked on decentralized, market-driven, governance mechanisms.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Martin does not read books, but considers Reddit a good resource What CEO do you follow? – some VCs, but no specific CEO Favorite online tool? — Slack, Trello How many hours of sleep do you get?— Less than 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – He wished he looked earlier into game theory and economics

Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:07 – Nathan introduces Martin to the show 01:43 – Bitcoin was the reason Martin got into the crypto and blockchain space 01:58 – This was during the time the Euro was having problems 02:09 – Martin started to evaluate how he looked at money; he learned about bitcoin and the possibility of creating different forms of money 02:35 – Gnosis has evolved 03:04 – They are assuming that Gnosis will be a decentralized platform for prediction markets; for betting, auctions and insurances 04:32 – Martin says companies like eBay, Uber and AirBnB will be replaced by a decentralized platform 04:51 – They may replace companies that go into information aggregation 05:02 – Instead of having different analysts determine the revenue of a company, markets and forecasts will be aggregated to one number 05:15 – Gnosis has zero customers and zero in revenue, but they have a team and have raised capital thru selling GNO tokens; they raised $12.5 million 06:14 – The tokens were sold for 250,000 ether, a blockchain currency, and at the time the tokens were sold, the ether was worth $12.5 million 06:55 – The token has its own value and is currently trading at $240 a piece 07:04 – Gnosis collects ether and pays their employees with it 07:33 – To convert ether into real dollars, Martin uses Kraken, Coinbase and Poloniex 08:40 – The foundation of crypto is its big vision and the vision to create something as big as the internet; however, currently, it is still just speculation 09:31 – The token itself is almost always issued in Ethereum; the consumer creates the rules so the first set of rules they made involved organizing the token sales 10:03 – Martin did the token auction and was completely controlled by the blockchain 10:40 – Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum was easier to use for developers 11:10 – If crypto becomes the currency of the future, Martin says he hopes that people will become equally rich. He is currently working on a project where each person can issue their own currency and others would agree to accept each other’s currencies 11:37 – They are trying to democratize money 12:27 – Nathan says there is a limited supply of ethereum in the blockchain 12:46 – Personally, Martin does not follow the bitcoin model 13:02 – Martin is thinking of a new world where people are part of a new economy; each one gets to issue their own tokens and the tokens have value 13:50 – Inflation can be used to finance a public good 14:11 – For example, let’s say you want to create a platform like Uber, Uber is made to serve the public 14:35 – The operating cost is not what made Uber expensive to build, it was the spend on marketing and buying everyone on the platform 14:57 – Martin says there can be a new model where people can create value by joining the same platform 15:13 – The value creation happens when people join the platform, this is where tokens are useful and can be used as incentives 15:58 – The early adopters get more and those who join later will have to pay fees 16:12 – Nathan says this sounds like a network marketing scheme 16:25 – Martin says this is how Uber found success – in the beginning someone paid $2 billion and in the end, it’s the users that pay; but, the curve can be much flatter 17:02 – Nathan asks Martin how values go up in crypto 17:42 – Martin says value creation is made when everyone agrees on something 18:15 – The thing about competing token issuances is that people need to find a way to combine their different tokens onto one platform 18:44 – Nathan says he can see the good intentions of the people who are in the crypto space, but he is trying to figure out who will win or lose when the crypto marketplace is more mature and established 19:28 – Martin says assuming there will be a winner and loser, the difference is found in people who have control over a platform 19:49 – For example, in Uber they can change rules and raise fees, but on a decentralized platform, you can structure it in a way that makes restrictions on yourself 20:16 – If you monopolize the platform, you can still get the fee but you have no control in changing it 21:02 – Martin says there is power in making your governance mechanism into something that does not allow you to change anything 23:31 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: Crypto and blockchain can be the currency of the future. You create value when people agree to join a platform together. A future where people can have their own currency may be the way to democratize our use of money.

Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives